Literary Giants Literary Catholics

by Joseph Pearce

  When I find myself

  In times of trouble

  Mother Mary comes to me

  Speaking words of wisdom,

  Let it be.

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  ABOVE ALL SHADOWS RIDES THE SUN

  The Poetry of Praise

  A review of

  Lion Sun: Poems by Pavel Chichikov+

  ON FIRST LAYING MY HANDS on a copy of Pavel Chichikov’s poems, I was reminded, somewhat incongruously, of C. S. Lewis. The association of the one with the other had nothing to do with any perceived similarity in their poetry. On the contrary, although Chichikov dedicates one of the poems in Lion Sun to “C.S.L.”, they are as different as the proverbial, or poetical, chalk and cheese. The association arose from the delightful cover art depicting the “Lion Sun” of the book’s title as an Aslanesque personification of the Sun or Son, leaping toward the reader from its heat-haze halo. The blending of Lewis’ Aslan with Chichikov’s “Lion Sun” is itself emblematic of the evocative evolution of ideas that proliferate in Chichikov’s work. His imagery leads one from the nature-prophetic to the supernature-profound in a progressive stream of associated ideas pointing to something deeper. Such Franciscan mysticism fused into verse is very reminiscent of Roy Campbell’s sonnet sequence “Mithraic Emblems”, and, most particularly, his sonnet “To the Sun”.

  The most powerful and penetrating impression that one derives from Chichikov’s verse is a sense that he is a true mystic. His poems resonate with distant yet distinct echoes of others who were similarly blessed with the mystic muse. Apart from Campbell, one senses the presence of Hopkins, Blake and R. S. Thomas. Thus, in “Prayer”, the “dapple-shadowed” presence of Hopkins is unmistakable.

  All messengers are angels, and the lesser ones are

  Thermal-riding hawks, foreboding crows and ravens

  Agile swifts, athletic gulls and plunging pelicans

  Cranes that lumber and the geese like cannon-shot

  From silent catapults, ducks on analeptic wings

  And furtive, dapple-shadowed wrens and finches . . .

  Lines such as these are typical of Chichikov’s preoccupation with the beauties of the natural world and its wildlife. He praises the wren as a feathered bell, “A bell that’s made of feathers and of fire”, and the goldfinch is lauded for its “silver flute” and its “sweet and liquid” song. He is very much a nature poet, though a nature poet who never loses sight of the connection between creature and Creator. For Chichikov, Creation, in its beauty and through its beauty, always points to its Source. As a true romantic, he is deeply distressed by the ugliness that destroys beauty. In particular, he laments with luddite eloquence the encroachments of scientism, the “hideous strength” that destroys creation and desecrates its Source. Occasionally, as in “Dynamite”, Chichikov’s plaintive voice explodes in the pyrotechnic brilliance of inspired juxtaposed imagery:

  Conquistador technology,

  Exploration of the islands of the cortex of the brain . . .

  Suffering, and the mystical necessity of its acceptance, is a recurring theme, almost a leitmotif. In “Golgotha’s Mary”, Chichikov relinquishes the modern mode of expression for the medieval, finding inspiration from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.

  Not alone to shepherds or in caves

  No burning cherub or Creator’s slave

  But one of us, Mater Creatoris

  Not alone to victims or to innocents

  You also come to help impenitents

  And prisoners, Mater Salvatoris

  Elsewhere, as in “Pouring the Moon” or “Empty Church”, the medieval meets modernity in a mystic kiss, the metrical jollity clashing in creative bliss with the Baudelairean sin-psychology. Similarly, “Seven Song”, possibly my favorite of all the poems in this volume, is a Dantean romp on the subject of the seven deadly sins that skips along with rambunctious and outrageous abandon, the meter as breathless as that employed to immortal effect by Belloc in “The End of the Road”.

  Stoop-shouldered Pride

  Slavering Greed

  Eros the stupid

  Envy the weed

  Anger the swollen

  Glutton the base

  Lazy the witless

  Falls on his face

  All of them offspring

  Of Adam the rover

  Who gave up a kingdom

  To scuff the world over.

  It is difficult to praise Lion Sun highly enough. At his best, Chichikov is himself a feathered bell, chiming with “sweet and liquid” beauty. Several of the poems in this wonder-filled volume have earned Pavel Chichikov a place among my all-time favorite poets: Robert Southwell, Richard Crashaw, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Francis Thompson, Hilaire Belloc, Roy Campbell, T. S. Eliot, R. S. Thomas and Pavel Chichikov. Having read and enjoyed the best of the poems in Lion Sun, I believe that Pavel Chichikov does not seem out of place in such illustrious company.

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  THE MAGIC OF TECHNOLOGY

  IT MIGHT SEEM A LITTLE ODD to suggest a connection between technology and the occult. It is, however, only a little odd because we live in an age that is more than a little odd. The oddness of the age, and the all-pervasive perversity of its spirit, was summed up recently in the words of a plaintive correspondent to a nameless newspaper. “Why could religion not be as broad-minded as science?” the correspondent inquired indignantly “Why is religion always looking to the past? Why is it always bogged down with tradition? Why can’t it learn from science which always looks to the future?” The words of the correspondent could have been published in the pages of almost any newspaper in almost any country in the world. Such is its universal appeal to the secularist spirit of the age. Indeed, such is its attunement to the Zeitgeist that it almost serves as its mantra or its dogma.

  In answering these questions, which represent the charges of the secularist Inquisition, we shall discover that they are not merely superficial in their reasoning and supercilious in their raison d’être, but that they are ultimately superstitious in their reaction to ultimate reality. Furthermore, we shall discover the synonymous nature of magic and technology; or, to succumb to the temptation to employ more controversial language, we shall expose the unholy marriage of applied science and the occult.

  Perhaps it would be simplest to commence by answering the last, and most transparently facile, of the charges, posing as questions, put by our secularist Inquisitor. Science does not, of course, always look to the future. If it did, it would, at that very moment, cease to be science. In fact, it would, at that very moment, cease to be anything at all. Science, as someone quipped with a rare combination of wit and wisdom, is nothing more than the pygmies of the present sitting on the shoulders of the giants of the past. No discipline in the field of human knowledge is more bound to the breakthroughs of the past than the science of the present. No discipline is more dependent on its own rules and regulations, laid down by great figures of the past, than is science. Even its innovations are not really innovations; they are never truly “new” in the sense of being “original”. They are merely developments of doctrine, or, at most and only rarely, they might represent new ways of seeing or understanding older truths. And, of course, science never creates any new reality; it merely discovers what was always there. It makes no more sense to pretend that science invents new truths than to pretend that America didn’t exist before Columbus discovered it. America was there long before Columbus; and the truth is there long before science discovers it.

  Truth is. That is, it is always in the present tense because it is always-present in the omnipresent sense. Truth not only is, in the sense of the temporally present, it was, and is, and is to come. It is ever-present, not merely within time—past, present or future—but beyond time and space. And this, of course, brings us to religion and the first three of our Inquisitor’s questions.

  Religion does not always “look to the past”, in the sense that it never lo
oks anywhere else, but it always looks to the past in the sense that it is the only way to know where we are in the present and, therefore, where we are going in the future. The past is a map that enables us to know where we are. If we forget the map, we get lost! Those who contemptuously dismiss the past are similar to hikers who contemptuously refuse to carry a map. As such, the past, and the traditions it presents to the present, are a valuable guide to the world in which we live. We discard it at our own peril. The more treacherous the landscape, the more perilous the absence of a map. We live in treacherous times. Facing them without a map is nothing short of foolhardy.

  Incidentally, and staying with our topographical analogy, the Church can be likened to a compass in the same way that the past can be likened to a map. She points unerringly to “true north”, that is, God.

  Where does our refutation of the charges of the secularist Inquisition leave us in relation to our early suggestion that there is an unholy marriage between magic and technology? Quite simply, magic and technology have this much in common—they both seek to manipulate reality for their own, normally selfish, ends. Magic, in the medieval world, was often associated with the art, or science, of alchemy. Alchemists, the precursors of modern scientists, sought to find a way of turning base metals into gold. Now, apparently, modern alchemists, using the latest scientific techniques that involve bombarding the nucleus of an atom with electrons have succeeded where their medieval forebears failed. Modern technology has succeeded in making medieval magic. Base metals can be turned to gold. At present the process is not economically viable, but where there’s a proverbial will . . .

  At this juncture it is tempting to posit a moral argument about the dangers of the “Midas touch”. The temptation will, however, be resisted. One does not wish to offer the secularist Inquisition further cause to point the accusing finger. One can almost hear the same plaintive voice muttering questions. Why does “religion” insist on dredging up the past? Why does it always seek to introduce a moral dimension to the application of technology? Why does it pretend that there is any valuable truth to be found in old myths? Why indeed. . .?

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  RUSSIAN REVELATIONS

  FOR THOSE OF US WHO GREW UP in the icy shadow of the cold war, the very name of Russia can still send a shuddering chill up the spine. It is the chill of the Cheka or the KGB, the Soviet secret police. There remains, for our generation, the lingering suspicion that something in the soul of Russia is dark and cruel. The Russian Bear, though temporarily sedated with the narcotic drug of capitalist consumerism, is only sleeping. When it awakes, it will emerge as menacing as ever. Such are our fears. Are they justified?

  Certainly there is something brutal about Russia’s recent history. Estimates of the numbers who perished under the Soviet Terror range from thirty to sixty million. Only Chairman Mao’s China can boast more victims than Stalin’s Soviet Union. Nor can the Russians escape the censure on the grounds that Josef Stalin was not a Russian but a Georgian. One might as well excuse the Germans for the barbarities of the Third Reich on the basis that Hitler was not German but Austrian.

  Yet who are we to judge? England’s record is scarcely without blemish. We had our own “revolution” almost four centuries earlier, in which it became an act of treason to profess the Catholic faith. Many Catholic priests were butchered in the most barbaric way, by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Even members of the laity were in peril. Margaret Clitherow, an expectant mother, was tortured to death in horrific fashion in the city of York because she would not renounce her Catholic faith and because she refused to betray the priests she had harbored. Perhaps, as Englishmen, we should examine the plank in our own eye before we are too hasty in pointing out the mote in the eye of the Russian people.

  In fact, and indeed, the English and the Russians have a great deal in common. Having abandoned their rightful but spurned inheritance, the orthodox Christianity of their fathers, the English and the Russians find themselves in a post-Reformation or post-Revolution no-man’s-land of doubt and desolation. Between us and our past is an abyss of betrayal—the betrayal of God and His Church on the altar of failed utopias that have decayed into the sin, cynicism and insincerity of postmodern pseudorationalism. In place of the priceless treasure of God Himself, offered on Catholic and Orthodox altars, we have accepted the devil’s bargain. We have abandoned Life Itself for the living death of self-consumerism, an empty religion that has nothing to offer but “consumer products”. These trinkets and gadgets are the idolized gadgets of self-worship. Oh, how we have sold our very souls for so very, very little!

  To quote the words of Hardy, not Thomas but Oliver, what a fine mess we have gotten ourselves into! The question is, how do we get ourselves out?

  It is all a matter of Time . . .

  It is often said that time is a great healer, and, as with so many truisms, this particular truism happens to be true. Ultimately, the cure for the modern malaise affecting England, Russia and, for that matter, the rest of the world, is to be found in the healing hands of Time. It is, in fact, a question not only of Time but of Timelessness. Paradoxically, the present is always passing away. It is, in fact, never really here or, at least, is never within our grasp. By the time we think about the present moment, it is already in the past. The temporal point, like the mathematical point, doesn’t really exist except as a metaphysical concept. It exists in the realm of truth, but not in fact. Consequently, we are always living in the past and thinking about the future!

  What exactly does such abstruse metaphysics have to say about our present problems? Quite simply, it is to show that our future depends on our past. The antidote to modern despair is ancient wisdom. The cure for decadence is renewal. The cure for postmodern deconstruction is Christian Reconstruction. The cure for post-Reformation England and post-Revolution Russia lies in their respective, and shared, cultural heritage: Shakespeare and Pushkin; Dickens and Dostoyevsky; Chesterton and Chekhov; Belloc and Blok; Tolkien and Tolstoy.

  Perhaps we should conclude with some “Russian revelations” that might constitute a prophecy, or possibly merely wishful thinking. They are, at any rate, a prayer. They are fed by faith, rooted in hope and lived in love. The prophecy or prayer is this: that when the Russian bear awakens, it will roar in union with the British Lion. And both will lie down before the Lamb.

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  DANTE

  Assent’s Ascent

  SOME TIME AGO, at a Catholic Writers’ Festival on the campus of Franciscan University in Steubenville, I was privileged to be part of a forum discussion on the subject of poetry. At the end of a very lively and fruitful debate as to what constituted Christian poetry, the panel members were asked by a member of the audience to name the greatest Christian poem of all time. The two other panel members answered, without the slightest hesitation, that Dante’s Divine Comedy warranted this singular accolade. I was, of course, in total agreement with my colleagues. Yes indeed, I replied, Dante’s masterpiece deserves to be crowned with the supreme laurel.

  The concord between me and my colleagues was hardly surprising. The Divine Comedy is such a magnificent achievement that it has no equal within the sphere of poetry. It is a literary edifice that towers over its rivals. As such, the question from the audience was almost superfluous. After all, what’s the point of asking a question to which only one answer is possible? I was reminded, in fact, of T. S. Eliot’s judgment on Dante: “I feel that anything I can say about such a subject is trivial. I feel so completely inferior in his presence—there seems really nothing to do but to point to him and be silent.”1 If the greatest poet of the twentieth century was rendered speechless in the presence of the medieval master, what hope was there for three mere “experts”? Like Eliot, we had little option but to point to Dante and be silent. Such was the apt if somewhat anticlimactic end to our discussion of Christian poetry.

  In spite of his own cautionary words on the subject, Eliot did not always rem
ain silent. In The Sacred Wood, he wrote that “Dante’s is the most comprehensive, and the most ordered presentation of emotions that has ever been made.”2 He also insisted that Dante was superior to Milton, dismissing the latter’s claim as a worthy contender or pretender to the Italian’s crown. “Dante seems to me so immeasurably greater in every way, even in control of language, that I am often irritated by Milton’s admirers.”3

  As usual, I find myself in essential agreement with Eliot. The difference between these two great poets, Dante and Milton, is truly abysmal, in the sense that an abyss separates them. It is an abyss that is analogous to the chasm that separates heaven from hell. One does not need to agree wholeheartedly with William Blake’s assertion that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it” to agree nonetheless with his judgment that “Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell”. Whether or not Milton truly had sympathy for the devil, he certainly gave him many of the best lines.

  The difference between Milton and Dante can be summarized succinctly. Milton’s approach is devious, deviant, even devilish; Dante’s is divine. Milton’s focus is principally infernal, concentrating on infernal principalities and powers; Dante’s is always on paradise, even when he is in hell. Milton’s heaven is a military dictatorship with Satan as the leader of an army of rebel freedom fighters; Dante’s heaven is a communion of saints living in harmony within a hierarchy of virtue, moved by Love. Milton points to hell, even from heaven; Dante points to heaven, even from hell. Milton descends from the positive to the negative; Dante ascends from the negative to the positive. Milton’s is the tragedy of a Paradise Lost; Dante’s the comedy of a Paradise Attained.